


Where the Purple Flowers Grow

by AthenasAspis (agentandromeda)



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Angel (Borderlands) Lives, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Tales AU Where Angel's There, Vault Hunting Shenanigans, and shes out to get Hyperion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2019-09-30 06:52:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17219015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentandromeda/pseuds/AthenasAspis
Summary: After escaping the Bunker one year ago, Angel wandered Pandora, stuck between wanting to reject every aspect of her painful past and feeling intense guilt over every moment she wasn't trying to stop others from unleashing the destruction of the Vaults. Finally, she chases down an old Atlas project designed to find Vaults, with the intent of destroying it forever. But other people are on its trail as well.Angel knows she should leave them behind. She's only ever hurt others. But she's always wanted an adventure of her own. And maybe someone to share it with.





	1. Meetings

**Author's Note:**

> listen. okay. just listen. i know i've already written a fic of "what if angel was in tales." but consider this: I Love Her
> 
> also this may turn into a fic for one of the rarest borderlands pairs stay tuned uwu
> 
> Update 2: Fic no longer discontinued and also phasegrift will DEFINITELY be a thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember how I said this fic was discontinued? I lied. I'm gonna keep writing this

Angel had sworn that she’d never set foot near anything to do with Vaults again. But she’d never been too good at keeping promises.

Hell, there were just too many people on this rock looking out for number 1, and not nearly enough looking out for a different number: the number of people that would inevitably die for each Vault horror unleashed upon Pandora. The path to the Destroyer was littered with Atlas soldiers and Pandoran citizens. The Sentinel had created a monster. The Warrior had nearly ended the planet.

Angel used to be in charge of opening Vaults. Now, she’d given herself the job of making sure they stayed closed. 

Which was how she found herself flattened against the side of an old Atlas building, her sword pressing into her back and a migraine threatening to incapacitate her. Muffled conversation drifted around the corner between an affable bandit and the fast-talking con she’d followed here. Not that Angel couldn’t have found the place herself—it was pretty much a hub of Atlas’s Vault-finding operations, after all—but it was easier to just follow people. Less thinking involved that way. Less time for Angel’s brain to tear itself apart. Less migraines.

Angel crept toward a thin seam in the metal. This door wasn’t technically supposed to be there, but there was always some maintenance door or uber-secret corporate entrance. Every. Single. Time. The doors weren’t even secret anymore, since everyone had one.

It slid open with a barely audible hiss. Angel winced at the sound and froze. No change in the tone of the nearby conversation. She slipped through the door and shut it behind her.

The building was like the ribcage of a fallen, skeletal titan. Not a single mote of sunlight drifted through the air, yet as she entered, amber lights weakly hummed to life. 

Surprised this place still has power, she thought. Atlas was long dead, yet some of its life still lingered in the eerie silence of these old buildings.

Angel wasn’t in awe in the presence of this fallen god. After all, she’d helped kill it.

The silence was broken by the sound of talking. Echoes making their way up from the ground floor. Someone else was here. Angel crept through the cramped maintenance tunnels until she emerged onto a gridiron catwalk over the main space. The room was giant, cavernous, with a computer console on the floor in the center. The lights were already on in here, giving Angel the impression that she was inside a giant, soot-covered chunk of topaz. The red paint was chipped. Bits of it fluttered to the ground as Angel’s steps echoed far too loudly over the metal. The guards didn’t notice. Nobody ever noticed her.

They were coming. She had to hurry. 

As she approached the terminal, she noticed a figure standing in the corner of the room, watching her. Black armor, black mask. A sword with a neon blue blade that stood out starkly against the red and yellow lights. And some tells that no one but an experienced programmer would be able to see.

Angel whirled around and drew her sword just in time to block the streak of blue that came swinging down at her back. The clash was loud—too loud. The guards would notice.

“Don’t kill me,” she pleaded—well, demanded. It was the appearance of vulnerability that gave the command its force. The enigmatic figure paused and put a finger to where its lips would be. Bandits didn’t use voice modulators. Perhaps hers had marked them as kindred spirits.

“I’m not a bandit,” she whispered. “Just…a concerned citizen.”

“Have you seen a Gortys core?” the figure asked.

Of course Sanctuary knew about Gortys. The universe would never deviate from its pattern enough to let Angel catch a break.

“No,” Angel told them, “but I’ll let you know if I see one.”

Zer0 straightened and put their sword away. They cocked their black-plated head at Angel’s cautiously lowered blade.

“Interesting blade. I have not seen one like it. And I know my swords”

“It’s from a discontinued line,” Angel replied. “Limited edition.”

“Hey!” one of the guards called. “Steve, is that you? What’re you doing down there?”

She could make out individual words in the conversation of the pair coming down the hallway now. Nowhere to hide. Just some cages repurposed for the death race. Full of skags. Not the best hiding place. 

Zer0 disappeared.

“Typical Vault Hunters,” Angel muttered as she ducked behind the computer console. She hoped she wouldn’t have to deal with these newcomers. As a general rule, she didn’t like dealing with anyone. 

“It’s Rebecca,” she yelled back to the guard. “Just checking in on these old machines.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” the guard replied. “Have fun! Don’t let the skags get ya!”

She risked a peek around the corner and watched as some more bandits entered the room. One of them had a briefcase in its hand, a rather uncharacteristic bandit accessory. But what made Angel’s hackles raise and her breath catch was the logo the briefcase bore. An all-too-familiar letter.

If Hyperion was involved, perhaps Angel was in for more than she had bargained for.

One of them stepped up to the console—Angel held her breath—and input a few commands. The floor hummed with rusty mechanisms and a circle in the floor began to rise, with them on it. An unnecessarily complicated elevator. Atlas style.

Just as Angel was about to emerge to use the console, the first guard fell to the ground. The soft thud was barely perceptible, but Angel was very perceptive. She peeked up and saw a woman perched over his prone form on the catwalk. On the other catwalk, a man wearing corporate clothing—the logos weren’t readable from this distance, but no one but a Hyperion man would wear those hideous pinstripes—took a running leap at the other guard and began miserably failing at choking him out.

Angel giggled at the guard and the woman roasting the company man. It was a subdued giggle. Hyperion was definitely involved, which was bad. Somewhere very close to Angel’s heart lived an urge to run up the ladder and skewer the man. As much as she avoided direct violence, the worst part of her wanted to see that smarmy Hyperion face covered in Atlas-red blood. 

The worst parts of her and the parts closest to her heart felt the same. 

Angel’s eyes widened as the man gave up the choking charade, pulled out a stun baton, and sent the guard flying. She was torn between “tacky Hyperion garbage” and “that’s a cool baton, I want it.”

The man and woman descended the ladder.

“We need to get the elevator working,” the woman announced. 

She was obviously Pandoran. Her outfit was a jumble of asymmetrical scavenged scraps that somehow managed to add up to a coherent and flattering outfit. Her colorful nail polish was offset by a pair of wicked-looking earrings. Her smirk screamed confidence and her every look at the man screamed disdain. She was everything Angel had been trained not to be. Naturally, Angel was instantly fascinated.

The man was not nearly as complex. Just another cardboard Hyperion stooge sporting permanently gelled hair and a shiny metal arm specially designed for backstabbing. Naturally, Angel despised him instantly.

They were at the console now, so close to Angel that she barely dared to breathe. On the bright side, they appeared to have no idea what Gortys meant, and were instead focused on getting the elevator working.

Angel had had enough experience with Hyperion to be completely unsurprised when the man’s hamfisted “hacking” opened the skag cages. She had had enough experience with Pandorans to be completely unsurprised when the woman calmly and competently fired on the skags. 

“I’ve almost got it!” the man shouted. It became increasingly clear to Angel as the skags approached from all directions that she was going to have to reveal herself and get on that elevator. 

“Don’t shoot!” she cried as she emerged. The man yelped in surprise. Angel stood behind the woman and drew her sword.

“Where’d you come from?” the woman demanded.

“Around,” Angel replied, halfheartedly fending off a snarling skag. She’d always wanted one for a pet. 

The elevator shuddered into movement beneath them.

“I did it!” the Hyperion slime bag declared. He sounded extremely smug. 

The elevator was moving fairly fast. However, a little-known fact about skags is that their vertical leap is unmatched among Pandoran beasts (except stalkers). Angel watched as a skag sprung from the ground, jaws agape, aiming for the man’s jugular. 

Angel could have skewered the beast. Instead, she stood on the platform and watched.

She couldn’t help but feel a jot of disappointment when the skag stopped dead in midair and Zer0 flickered into view.

“Have you seen a Gortys core?” the thin figure asked. 

“Y-you’re really cool,” the man stuttered. “I just wanted you to know that.”

Zer0’s mask flashed a heart emoji. Angel stared at the Hyperion man.

“Since when is a Hyperion man a Vault Hunter fanboy?”

“Swords are cool!” the man blurted. “And I can work for Hyperion and still think Vault Hunters are cool!”

Angel crossed her arms. Her face was hidden behind her mask, but the raised eyebrow was very much implied in her posture.

“Look,” the man said, “I don’t have to agree with everything Hyperion thinks or does. I’m not a drone.”

“You work for Hyperion,” Angel drawled. “Drone. By definition.”

The Pandoran woman held up her hand for a high five. Angel smacked it. The man pouted. A circle of sunlight came into view, accompanied by the sound of cars. Very fast ones. 

“Well,” Angel said, “this ride’s been fun, but I’ve got my own stuff to attend to.”

“As do I, comrades.” Zer0 said. “Bossanova awaits death. I bid thee adieu.”

The elevator juddered into place. The sunlight was blinding after the stuffy darkness of the Atlas room, so it took Angel a moment to get her bearings. The bearings were not entirely pleasant ones.

“Crap,” the man muttered. 

Angel took stock of the situation and made an executive decision as to her plan of action. That executive decision was to find a very good hiding place amid the fallen concrete and let the chips fall where they may. She couldn’t get out of the racing ring, so why not let the other three take care of any problems?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel finds something dangerous. Unfortunately, she's not the only one who finds it.

As it turned out, the other three were not entirely capable of taking care of any problems. As a general rule, problems didn’t get solved on Pandora, merely multiplied. 

Zer0 immediately went after the bandit boss, leaving the other strangers to deal with all manner of psychos and skags. Angel hissed in frustration. Better to take care of the threats alongside the newcomers than wait for them to come for her. Besides, she didn’t want the Pandoran woman to get her face bitten off. 

She hated herself for her selfishness. Her first instinct was to keep hiding, and that meant that Handsome Jack had broken her in a way that couldn’t be fixed.

“Hey!” Angel called, rushing up with sword drawn. “What’s your name!”

“R-Rhys,” the Hyperion man stuttered, facing down a roaring skag about half the size of an elephant. 

“Cool,” Angel said, “I wasn’t asking you.”

“Sasha,” the woman called. She fired a few rounds ineffectually into the monster’s face. 

The next few minutes were a whirlwind of flashing blades and speeding cars, of yells and calls and the acrid stench of blood that creeped through Angel’s air filters. It didn’t bother her; she’d spend most of her life with the metallic taste of her own blood filling her mouth and the metaphorical scent of the blood on her hands filling her nose. Metaphorically, of course. But it felt real to Angel. 

And then there was the explosion. A fiery roar far overpowering the sound of the race, accompanied by a blast of heat and light. Burnt scraps began fluttering from the sky. As they fell, Angel made them out for what they were. Hundred dollar bills.

“No!” Rhys shouted. 

“Oh yeah,” Angel snapped, “I bet money’s so important to you that that physically hurt. Do you even have a heart anymore, or is it just nickels in there?”

“Not your best,” Sasha said, “but I like it.”

Angel high-fived her proffered hand.

Guns and shields lay strewn across the battlefield. Angel wasn’t interested in any of them. If she needed weapons, she could get the money.

There were two new people here now. Friends of Rhys and Sasha. A woman in a hat and russet jacket, looking like an old-time pirate. Her hair sported a red streak, and her eyes were hooded and dangerous. Angel spotted a flash of metal tucked up her sleeve. This woman was Pandoran, and obviously knew what she was doing. 

The other person was a man in Hyperion clothes with a bandit mask perched incongruously on his forehead. His slouch and squinted eyes betrayed the approximate nervous demeanor of a chihuahua. 

Their names were Fiona and Vaughn, Angel learned from listening to their conversation. They didn’t even notice her standing at the edge of their group.

Quite a motley crew. 

“What do we do now?” Rhys sighed despairingly.

“Do as the Pandorans do,” Fiona replied. “Wait for more powerful people to kill each other, then go through their stuff.”

Angel used to be the one killing all the powerful people. She had engineered the downfall of so many giants. How many of those giants had Fiona scavenged? How many people had died in the rubble?

“What about you, uh….sword lady?” Sasha asked. “What’re you doing here?”

“My name is Angel,” Angel replied. “I’m just, you know, looking around.”

Sasha raised an eyebrow. “At a bandit death race?”

Angel shrugged. “Would you like to suggest some other attractions? I’ve already seen the world’s largest bullet.”

With that, Rhys displayed his signature combination of bad luck, clumsiness, and crippling incompetence and fell into a hole.

“Rhys!” Sasha called. “You good down there?”

She obviously held great disdain for Rhys, and yet showed concern. Angel could muster up no such sympathy, because she was not a good person. 

Angel peered over the edge and saw Rhys ruefully rubbing his head on a polished floor. He was surrounded by silver and red.

Angel quickly hopped from concrete to wood to metal until she reached him. She offered no helping hand to get him off the ground, instead investigating her surroundings. It was some sort of secret storage area, with multiple sleek compartments designed specifically to denote valuable contents without providing any extra security. Dust hovered in the air. Her air filter whirred. 

Gortys was here. Angel could feel it. She wasn’t sure if it was a normal gut feeling or a feeling of the more supernatural variety.

The rest of their ragtag party—their as in Rhys and Sasha’s, not Angel’s, she was definitely not a part of this—bounded down into the room.

Vaughn and Sasha started investigating the weapons and gadgets—limited edition, of course—lining the walls. Angel stood transfixed before the pillar in the center in the room.

“It’s the last one,” Fiona said from over her left shoulder.

“I’m taking it,” Angel told her. “You don’t want it, anyway. It’ll only bring you pain.”

“So why do you want it?” Rhys asked.

“To destroy it,” Angel replied, laying her hand on the blood-orange button. “It’s the only way.”

“Hold your horses,” Rhys began, but Angel had already revealed the Gortys core.

She recognized it immediately, of course. She’d seen all its blueprints. She’d read the secret diaries of its engineers. And now she’d erase it.

“I think this should be a group decision,” Rhys decided. “First, tell us what it does.”

“What’re you guys looking at?” Sasha asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Angel replied, grabbing the defense piece.

Before she could do anything more, Sasha reached out and grabbed the attack piece.

“Dammit,” Angel muttered.

“What?” Sasha asked.

“Nothing.”

“Let me see!” Fiona demanded. 

“I wouldn’t—“ Angel started. Her sentence was cut off by Sasha handing the piece to Fiona, who dropped it with a yelp.

“Yeah, it does that,” Angel concluded.

“Why didn’t you say so?” Fiona grumbled.

“Looks like they fit together,” Sasha observed. 

“No, they don’t,” Angel responded quickly. “Listen, just let me destroy this. It’ll save us all a lot of pain.”

“What even is this?” Vaughn asked.

Angel opened her mouth to answer, and was interrupted by Rhys giving a strangled cry and looking over his shoulder.

“Rhys?” Fiona tapped his shoulder. “You good?”

“I, ah…” Rhys trailed off and began walking towards the iron staircase along the far wall.

“He’s probably fine,” Angel sighed. 

Sasha picked up her half of the Gortys core and began inspecting it from all angles. 

“It’s gotta be some sort of weapon,” she speculated. “Why else would Atlas be keeping it down here?”

“You are exactly right,” Angel told her. “It’s an extremely dangerous weapon. It could kill millions of people. So I have to destroy it.”

Sasha narrowed her eyes at Angel and drew the core close to her chest.

“This is Pandora. No one has motives that pure. You probably just want it to yourself to destroy your enemies.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not! I don’t even know you! Why the hell should I trust you with this?” 

Angel sighed and tucked her Gortys half away in a side pouch. She couldn’t destroy it here; they’d stop her. It was four on one, and Angel didn’t like playing long odds. 

“Over here,” Vaughn called. “There’s a console. Maybe it’ll tell us something more about that core. Heh, rhymes.”

Of course, a console in a secret Atlas R&D storage unit would require a retina scanner. Normally, Angel would have left it alone. She had what she came for, let the strangers figure out their own problems. But she was curious. After all, there must have been some secrets Atlas had managed to hide from her. 

“Rhys might be able to get through this,” Vaughn muttered. “What’s he doing, anyway?”

“Being an idiot somewhere,” Angel replied. “Here, let me try.”

She pried off a side panel and connected some wires to her cybernetic arm. Her digistructed blue keyboard display sprung into view in front of her waiting fingers. Angel cracked her knuckles. The firewall was tough, but Angel ate Atlas firewalls for breakfast. Within five minutes, the console chimed “Welcome, Commandant Steele,” and displayed its contents. 

“Where’d you learn to do that?” Sasha demanded. “Hyperion?”

Angel didn’t reply, instead focusing on the data laid out before her. Nothing she hadn’t seen before. Just a few messages. She watched them on her Echo, then unplugged the wires and stepped back with a disappointed sigh and a gesture at the screen.

“All yours,” she said.

“Thanks,” Fiona replied, moving to the console. “Guess you’re handy to have around.”

A yelp echoed from the floor above.

“Rhys!” Vaughn called. “Everything okay up there?”

“Yeah, fine!” Rhys yelled back. “Just give me a minute.”

There was one container left unopened. It looked like a steel casket. Angel recognized it as an Atlas suspended animation chamber. She’d conducted considerable research into them, as she’d considered suspended animation as a method of faking her death. 

She approached the chamber. General Pollux must have been in charge of this place. Perhaps even one of the creators of the Gortys project. He couldn’t be allowed to survive. Atlas needed to take its knowledge of the Vaults to its dusty grave. 

All it would take was a simple hack to slowly shut off the life support systems. The general wouldn’t feel a thing.

“There’s a general in suspended animation here!” Fiona exclaimed. “Hey, I bet if we wake him up, he’ll know about this place.”

“Whatcha got there?” Sasha asked, peering over Angel’s shoulder. “Is this where Pollux is?”

“You may want to consider your options before reanimating an Atlas general whose building you just broke into and projects you just stole,” Angel advised the room at large. 

“But,” Fiona argued, “he’ll know where in Old Haven to find the next step of this thing.”

Angel swore internally. She should have deleted those messages.

“Yeah, I’m not too eager to get shot to death by an Atlas general,” Vaughn input.

“Really?” Fiona teased. “You just finished winning a bandit death race, and you’re scared of an unconscious military man from a dead corporation?”

Sasha leaned down to inspect the small blue panel on the side of the chamber.

“Angel,” she said, “you can figure out how to work this, right? With your super suspicious, probably dangerous, super cool skills?”

“I could,” Angel said carefully, “but I don’t think I want to.”

“Please?” 

Angel frowned. General Pollux would just give these interlopers more information. Information Angel didn’t want them to have. 

Sasha looked up at her with wide green eyes. “Pretty please?”

Angel huffed in frustration and knelt down next to her.

“Very well,” she groused. “But I will say I told you so if he shoots you.”

She began the reanimation sequence. 

It was rather anticlimactic. There were no loud beeps or hisses of air. Just a slow power-up sound, and the casket lid slid open.

Fiona wrinkled her nose. Pollux was still very much not moving.

“I think…he’s, um…” Vaughn trailed off. He took a few steps back.

“Yup,” Angel confirmed, “dead. Lots can go wrong in suspended animation.” It was one of the many reasons she hadn’t elected to undergo it.

Sasha shrugged. “Well, Athena would have killed him anyway, so I say it’s a wash.”

Vaughn looked considerably more upset than the Pandorans, as if he was becoming more aware of his own mortality with every passing second. It’s probably quite shocking for him, Angel thought. After all, everyone on Helios has an ego big enough to believe firmly in their own immortality. 

Angel closed the casket. Hopefully she’d be long gone by the time the place started to smell. 

“If Gortys is a weapon,” Vaughn mused, “it must be pretty valuable, right?”

“I’m not sure I like where you’re going with this,” Angel told him. 

“Like, say,” Fiona continued, “ten million dollars valuable?”

“Here,” Sasha said, “Angel, right? Gimme that core.”

“It’s time for me to leave,” Angel announced. “I will probably never see you again.”

She didn’t say goodbye as she headed towards the rubble leading out of the whole. She’d never said goodbye. 

Just as they were undoubtably about to rush her and fight her for the core, Rhys’s jackassery saved Angel’s bacon. 

Angel regretted not seeing him fall, but she did turn in time to see him sprawled over a bank of computers. 

“What the hell was that?” Fiona demanded as Vaughn pulled the Hyperion slime ball to his feet. Rhys muttered something inaudible.

Sasha sauntered over to Angel with the glint of deception in her eyes.

“So,” she said, “you want to destroy this weapon thingy, right?”

“That is the idea, yes.”

“But the console seemed to imply there was more than one part to it.”

“Yes…”

“So here’s what I’m thinking.”

Angel folded her arms and said nothing. Sasha continued, undeterred.

“You don’t seem like the type to leave a job unfinished. Why not come with us to Old Haven? That way you can destroy any knowledge or fragment of this thing.”

Angel opened her mouth to issue a categorical rejection of this transparent ploy to activate Gortys, then closed it, because even if Sasha intended to rob her blind and open a Vault, she was right. No doubt there were blueprints of the Core in Old Haven. The only reason Hyperion hadn’t used its resources to open the Vault of the Traveler yet was because Handsome Jack was uninterested in any reward that did not involve copious amounts of fire and brimstone. With new management, who knew what could happen?

“Fine,” she sighed. “I’ll come with you to Old Haven. But only to destroy this.”

“Yes!” Sasha cried, punching the air. “Road trip!”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel touches base with a friend. Things go far better than they could have.

Angel had never been on a road trip before, so she didn’t know exactly what they involved. However, she was fairly sure they typically didn’t include swooping rakks, giant beasts, two people probably dying, and coasting into a cave city with one wheel left.

Then again, nothing on Pandora was typical. 

“Are road trips usually like this?” she asked Sasha, in case she’d been missing something and “road trip” was code for “death ride through the desert.”

“Don’t be a smartass,” Fiona told her.

Angel sat back down on what remained of the caravan floor. She wasn’t trying to be a smartass, but she didn’t think Fiona would understand that. What kind of Pandoran had never been on a road trip?

Did road trips have to involve more than one person? If not, Angel had been on road trips. As far as Angel understood them, road trips involved stopping for snacks, and someone assigned to pick the music. Pandora wasn’t big on snacks. So what did people stop for on Pandoran road trips? Fights to the death, gladiator-style? Who in the caravan had the best music taste? Probably not Angel. Years of isolation had left her decidedly unhip with the kids. And she was a horrible driver. Did that leave her in charge of snacks? Road trips were very stressful, and Fiona obviously wasn’t taking questions.

“D’you think Scooter will fix it?” Fiona murmured to Sasha, who replied with a shrug.

Angel felt bad for them. Unlike the Hyperions, who had an entire space station to go home to, this was all they had. And it was ruined by Hyperion moonshots, which felt like at least 60 percent Angel’s fault. It wasn’t, of course, She hadn’t been remotely involved in the moonshot cannon construction. She knew that. But she didn’t feel it.

Angel opened up her ECHO interface and started typing. She knew every single weakness in Hyperion’s code. After all, she’d written its language. 

“I don’t know how we’re going to afford this,” Sasha sighed as the caravan rattled into Scooter’s garage. “We’ve got nothing.”

“Let me get this for you,” Angel told her. And after a pause, “Then maybe you’ll feel too guilty to stab me in my sleep and take the Core. Follow me.”

She stepped out of the caravan with the curious sisters in tow. 

“What kind of con are you going to pull?” Fiona whispered. “Doubt you can do it better than us.”

“I’m not a con artist,” Angel whispered back. “Well, I mean, yes. I’ve…run some cons. But I’m also stacked.”

Sasha’s eyes widened.

“Are you some sort of executive?” she hissed. “Undercover? If you’re so rich, why the ratty duds? Where did you make your money?”

A loud, twangy voice interrupted from the corner of the room.

“Oh hey! Didn’t see ya there! Welcome to Scooter’s Catch-a-Riiiiiiide! Sorry for the wait, just gettin’ our new partner all set up in these here digs. What can I do ya for?”

“New partner?” Sasha inquired, turning up her charm so bright Angel almost had to look away.

“Miss Springs!” Angel started at the name. “This business’s gettin’ too big for me to manage by my lonesome, and the woman knows her vehicles! And she’s got a mean right hook to boot!”

The woman in question approached from the other corner of the garage, wiping her greasy hands on a pair of dark stained overalls. Her eyes lit up when she saw Angel.

“Angel, darling! Haven’t seen you in forever!” 

“It’s great to see you too, Janey,” Angel replied. It had only been a month. “How are you? How are things?”

Janey shrugged.

“About as chipper as I could be. I’m gonna be managing this Catch-A-Ride, and Athena’s startin’ to take some work. Nothing Vault-Hunting related, mind you, just some mentoring, protection, that sort of thing. Got hired by a bloke named Felix to protect a pair of sisters. Easy work! Hopefully nothing too dangerous.”

“That’s great!” Janey couldn’t see Angel’s smile beneath her mask, so she tried to make it obvious in her voice. “How much trouble can a pair of Pandorans get themselves into?”

“Wait,” Fiona said slowly, “did you say Felix?”

Janey looked contrite.

“Mighty sorry. I’m not supposed to give out details like that.”

Sasha tugged on Fiona’s sleeve.

“There’s no way,” Fiona whispered back. “It’s a coincidence. It has to be.”

“Is Athena going to be back soon?” Angel asked. “I have something to talk to her about. About Atlas.”

Janey checked her watch.

“She’ll be back pretty soon, I reckon. In the meantime, do you want a cuppa? I can put a kettle on. Or we can—Oh! That caravan looks busted. What’d you do to it?”

“Actually,” Angel said, “that’s why we’re here. Or why they’re here, at least. This thing needs fixing, and the Catch-A-Ride is the best place for that.”

“Somethin’ like that,” Scooter input, checking his clipboard, “’s probably lookin’ like five thou, six thou.”

Fiona’s eyes bugged out of her head. Angel opened up her ECHO.

“Aaaannnnd…transferred. With a bit extra for the flames on the sides.”

Scooter’s eyes widened.

“Man, no one pays in direct transfer anymore! Plea-sure doin’ business!”

Sasha yanked Angel aside.

“He’ll find out that money isn’t real really, really fast,” she hissed. “What’s your exit plan?”

Angel shook her off. 

“It’s real,” she said. “I told you. I’m stacked.”

“This is goin’ to take me a few hours,” Scooter told a flabbergasted Fiona, “so y’might wanna explore Hollow Point for a bit. Take a look-see around.”

“Or,” Janey said, “you could stay for tea!”

“We have business to attend to, so…” Fiona said.

“Cool,” Angel replied, already following Janey to the kitchen. 

Janey made the best tea. It was sort of a superpower; she used the normal teabags and the normal water and prepared it no differently than anyone else, but the tea always came out tasting very delicious. Even in the dingy Catch-A-Ride kitchen, the cup Janey set down before Angel smelled divine, with the sweet scent of licorice punctuated with notes of cinnamon. Angel tapped the back of her mask, and the nanoparticles retreated back into the tiny digistructors behind her ears.

“You need more sun,” Janey told her, taking a seat with a tea of her own. “You’re still pale as a frosty shuggarath.”

“Hard to get sunscreen on Pandora,” Angel replied. 

“So,” Janey said. “What have you been up to since you left to, well, do something vague? Only safe things, I hope?”

“I went chasing after an old Atlas project,” Angel told her. “Athena already…took care of it. Most of it.” 

She took a long sip of her delicious tea and pondered exactly how much to reveal.

“Atlas was working on something,” she continued. “Something really, really secret. I managed to get my hands on part of it. I plan to destroy it. After I go to Old Haven and erase whatever records they have there.”

“I think Athena already went to Old Haven,” Janey said in a low voice, stirring her tea.

“Thanks to that,” Angel replied, “I should be safe. But Athena’s methods tend to involve more swords, less subterfuge. I need to make sure the destruction the Vaults wreaked is contained.”

“You got a good heart, Angel,” Janey told her. “I don’t know anyone else on this rock or the rock orbiting it who cares enough about the big picture to do what you’re doing.”

Janey thought she was a good person. Angel bowed her head, accepted the compliment, and tried to ignore her stabbing pangs of guilt. After all she’d done, if others thought she was good at heart it meant Angel was still lying to them. And she didn’t want to lie to Janey. She didn’t want to lie to the woman who found her wandering dizzily through a trash heap, who helped her after her amputation, who built her a prototype arm out of determination and spare parts. 

“Janey,” Angel began, “there’s…a lot I haven’t told you. About my past.”

“I’m used to it,” Janey said wryly. “You don’t have to tell me anything, love. You’ll always have a place at my teatable.”

Angel intended to tell Janey, in essay format, that she’d done horrible things, that the suffering she aimed to prevent was nothing next to the suffering she caused, and that, in conclusion, she had to leave everyone behind in order to avoid hurting them. Instead, suddenly and confusingly, she burst into tears.

Janey pushed the mug of tea into Angel’s hands and helped it to her lips.

“There, there. Tea always helps.”

Angel nodded. The tea was so nice and warm. 

Janey gave her fingers two quick squeezes. She knew how much Angel hated hugs. 

Angel laid her head down on her arms and tried to regain her composure. Three shuddering deep breaths. One, two, three, and she had her unreadable face back on. 

Janey frowned and checked her watch. She 

“I wonder where ‘thena is. She said she’d be in Hollow Point—somethin’ about her clients coming here.” She tapped something into her ECHO. “I’ll tell her you’re here.”

“I can’t wait to see her again.”

“Wish you’d called. We could’ve baked a cake, had a bonanza!”

Angel sipped her tea.

“These were not my initial travel plans.” She sighed. “I think I’m stuck with these people for a bit.” She smiled fondly. “They’re…very good at getting into trouble. Or, at least were. I think two of them might have died.”

It was very matter-of-fact. Angel viewed the suffering of Hyperion workers as if through a microscope. Detached. 

None of them had been anything but scientific when faced with her suffering. 

The murmur of voices in the background rose to argument-level volume. Angel could hear Sasha yelling about something. Just then, the door to the kitchen opened. Scooter poked his head in just as the mask finished solidifying over Angel’s face. 

“Uh, Springs? Loaded chick? We got a bit of a problem. Some Hyperion assholes ’n those sisters arguin’ with yer girlfriend.”

Janey sprung to her feet. 

“Now what could that be about?” 

Angel gave her tea one last regretful glance before entering the main garage. Sasha and Fiona were locked in fierce argument with Athena, while the miraculously alive Rhys and Vaughn had joined up with the stoic Loader Bot. Angel immediately pulled out a pistol and pointed it at them.

“Whoa!” Rhys cried.

“The moonshots. Explain.”

“We didn’t know about that!” Vaughn insisted. “Why would we order them to fire on us?”

Angel clicked the safety off. Her eyes narrowed. 

“Tell me about your current association with Hyperion.”

Rhys and Vaughn exchanged a sheepish glance.

“Oh, totally fine! Everything’s fine. We won’t sell you guys out, and once we have something worth the ten million dollars we stole, we’ll be back on Helios,” Rhys said decisively while Vaughn looked anxious.

Angel sighed and digitized the pistol away.

“I have a feeling that you guys are down here because everyone was smelling your blood in the water.”

Rhys frowned. Vaughn looked relieved.

“Take my advice,” Angel told them, raising her voice over Sasha berating Athena for…something, “and don’t go back there.”

“We’ll rule the place someday,” Rhys said confidently. “I don’t need advice on dealing with Hyperion from some second-rate bandit who’s never been off-planet.”

Angel shrugged. 

“Whatever you say. But just from what I’ve seen, you’re not an expert at good decisions.” She turned around to pay attention to a different conversation.

“What was I supposed to do?” Athena demanded. “Yell out our association in front of whatever bounty hunters were in pursuit?”

“You nearly decapitated my sister!” Fiona yelled.

“What happened?” Angel asked. 

The arguers turned to face her.

“Angel,” Athena said cordially. “It’s good to see you. Have you stayed safe?”

“Yes, I’ve be—“

“Why the hell do you all know each other?” Fiona demanded. “Is there some sort of scary lady consortium that I don’t know about?”

“Because if so, we want in,” Sasha added.

“I thought that went without saying,” Fiona told her. 

“What are you arguing about?”

Athena and Fiona explained in unison. Sasha nodded with her arms crossed. 

“Okay,” Angel said slowly. “So let’s just move past that.” She nodded at Athena. “It’ll be nice to have someone familiar in the caravan.”

“You’re traveling with them?” Athena asked. 

Angel sighed. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you on the road to Old Haven. But there’s something I have to do first.” She turned to Rhys. “Sit down at that worktable over there and put your metal arm on the surface.”

Rhys frowned.

“Whoah, I don’t see why I should—“

“Trust me.”

“Yeah, I’m not so sure about—“

“Rhys.” A commanding force creeped into her voice and Rhys slowly did as he was told. 

Angel pulled a box of small tools from a nearby bench—she had her own electronic tools, but they’d been modified to better suit maintenance of her own unique cybernetics. She loaded the specs for the YellowJacket Data Slicer™ onto the ECHO screen in her helmet. It was fairly new, but contained no features she hadn’t seen before. She started to screw open the panel concealing the advanced settings.

“Hey, whoah!” Rhys yanked his arm away. “What are you doing!?”

“I need to remove a component.”

“What?!”

“So Hyperion can’t find us.”

“I’m just going to repeat myself—what!?”

“You know, the tracker? That comes in every Hyperion prosthetic?”

Rhys’s eyes widened.

“That’s—that’s not a thing. I’d definitely know if that was a thing.”

“From what I’ve seen, you wouldn’t.”

“If it’s not a thing, how did Assquez find us earlier?” Vaughn asked. 

“You’ve had a Hyperion tracker inside you this whole damn time!?” Sasha demanded. “Unbelievable! You nearly got us killed, asshole!”

“There’s no tracker!” Rhys insisted. “That’s ridiculous!”

“It’s easy to prove, one way or another,” Angel replied. “Give me your arm.”

“Fine,” he grumbled, stretching out his arm again. “This is a waste of time.”

Angel flipped off the sensation switch and got to work, tuning out the conversation around her. Her focus was absolute.

Hyperion had gotten sloppy, it seemed; the tracker was sloppily disguised as a capacitor in the main power line. It was tiny, but unmistakable. Its blinking indicated an active signal. Unfortunately, it was wired into the power system, and Angel had to very carefully unplug some wires at the shoulder joint. Rhys winced; the splice site was the most sensitive area, Angel knew. 

With a tweezer, she triumphantly pulled out the tracker and passed Rhys the tools.

“Pull yourself together,” she told him. “I’m going to go fake your death.” 

She’d seen a few rakk nests near the entrance to Hollow Point, and it was very easy to get a rakk to eat something. With luck, Hyperion would presume Rhys and the rest of his…colleagues were in the stomachs of the local wildlife.


	4. Atlas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a fight. It's pretty cool.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys i have pneumonia so here's a chapter that was chillin in my drafts

They were in no rush, or so Angel thought. No one could possibly be tracking them.

They had the Gortys ball, which Sasha did not trust Angel to hold. It had only taken two minutes to download all the facility’s data and destroy its servers. So now they were admiring a statue.

And then the competition arrived. 

“Mr. Ten Million Dollars,” said a snide voice. They turned as one to see a large motley crew of bandits—plus one out-of-place smarmy-looking Hyperion executive—enter the building, all with guns drawn.

“Rhys,” Angel demanded, “how the hell did they find us?”

Rhys paid her no heed. He was too busy exchanging glares with the executive.

“August,” Fiona drawled. “So good to see you’re finally making friends. Better be careful. Never know who’ll trick your dumb ass.” 

“How did you find us!?” Rhys said, in what was probably supposed to be a demand but was veering dangerously into screech territory.

“You really should be more careful,” the Hyperion man sneered. “Never know who might be tailgating.”

Angel groaned. She should have checked for a tail. All that rigamarole over the tracker, and for nothing.

“What do you want?” Athena growled, stepping between the two groups.

“Take it easy, Red Menace,” said the smirking Hyperion man. He seemed unduly greasy. “We’ll give you twice whatever you’re getting from these chumps. All we want is the Gortys project.”

“And some revenge,” said the blond bandit leader.

“Well, I thought that went without saying.” He grinned at Athena. “I’m sure you can understand. Big fan of your work, by the way.”

“Twice the money,” reiterated the blond. 

Athena’s eyes narrowed. The bandits looked nervous.

“I don’t work with Hyperion,” she said coldly. She drew her sword. “Get out.”

The executive held up his ECHO. Angel’s cybernetics latched on to its signature.

“I don’t like to do this,” he said in an all too familiar tone that indicated that, whatever it was, he liked to do it very much. “How about you just come over here, and our friends back in Hollow Point won’t introduce yourself to your friend—what was her name? Janey?” He chuckled. “So nice for girls to be friends.”

Angel had seen videos of the ferocious focus of wolves on the hunt, their eyes glinting with steel as they tore into a wailing elk, and they seemed like frolicking puppies compared to Athena in that moment. 

Angel’s panicked helplessness lacked only for a second.

She had the power to keep people safe, and she was never going to let it go unused again.

“Dumplings,” Angel said. 

The enemies didn’t understand. Athena did, and that was the moment that the executive and his friends became the elk.

“Oh, I’ll come over there.” Athena’s voice was sharper than the edge of her sword.

“Get down!” Angel yelled as her virus took effect and every enemy ECHO, shield, and electronic weapon component exploded in a violent shower of sparks. 

She threw herself behind the statues pedestal as the bullets began to fly. Rhys yelled and hid behind the Defense doorway. Sasha ducked down next to Angel and started to fire around the corner of the pedestal. Angel’s sword materialized in her hand. Athena’s shield cracked sickeningly against six skulls. 

“Come on!” Athena yelled. “Not so brave without your dirty tricks, huh?” 

Someone screamed, probably through their own blood. Angel bit her lip. Her mind urged Athena to stop. Her heart beat in time with the bloodshed and the bullets, feeding its anger with the sound of death.

Angel switched on her shield and emerged from her hiding spot. Athena was untouchable, a red blur spreading red across the floor. The executive fired off a shotgun blast that wasn’t even accurate enough to hit Athena’s shield. Athena turned to look at him with manic eyes and a twisted snarl, and he dropped his gun and ran.

Ice raced down the swirling lines covering Angel’s sword. A bolt of cold energy shot from the point, and the executive fell to the ground with a strangled cry, clutching his foot.

“Cool sword!” Sasha yelled. “I want one.”

Angel turned for a moment to flash Sasha a grin, and in that moment of distraction, she was thrown off her feet. The ground slammed into her back and the breath left her lungs. The acrid scent of burnt fabric—some sort of blast had singed her left side. She couldn’t hear her ragged gasps over the ringing in her ears. She groaned and sat up. Pushing through the pain, like always.

Athena wasn’t moving—the blast must have hit her directly. Angel’s heart didn’t beat until she saw Athena’s chest move up, down, up, down. Sasha and Fiona were back to back, guns drawn, facing the newcomer and her reinforcements. A woman holding a smoking rocket launcher.

Vallory. Angel didn’t have her classified as a boss who’d be interested in Vaults.

Then again, none of these foolhardy Gortys seekers had even made the list.

The women were talking and Angel couldn’t hear any of it. Something must have interfered with her mask’s noise cancelling for a crucial moment. She crawled over to where Athena lay prone.

“Athena!” she hissed, shaking a red pauldron. “Get up! Please!”

Athena groaned. Angel rummaged through her pockets and pulled out an Anshin. She shoved up Athena’s sleeve and jabbed the needle through the skin. Angel had to look away as she pushed down the plunger.

“…his fault,” someone said. Fiona. Or maybe Sasha. Or maybe Vallory. “The deal…without him.”

Athena’s fists clenched. She propped herself up on her elbows and spit out blood that very well could have been someone else’s.

“I’m gonna kill every last one of these bastards,” she vowed through clenched teeth. 

Angel started to help Athena to her feet. The executive was back to his smarmy self, leaning on a reluctant-looking bandit to take weight off his foot. 

“Stay down,” Vallory growled, hefting the rocket launcher in a threatening manner.

Angel’s robotic arm hummed in time with the plates in her head. The weapon was made of cobbled-together parts from various manufacturers, but that wouldn’t be an issue. She was no longer limited to Hyperion, and the rocket launcher ran on electronic reload. Meaning its ammo was on a digistruct system.

She didn’t even need cybernetics to take those rockets. 

She pulled Athena to her feet. Vallory scowled. Athena leaned on her sword.

“Get out.” Athena’s voice was gravelly but no less threatening. 

She pulled away from Angel and held her shield high. Three red laser dots on red and black composite metal. Two more on Angel’s skull. Angel’s ECHO whirred into overdrive. She was terrified and drunk on power.

“I don’t need you two,” said Vallory. “In fact, I don’t need any of you.”

Vallory aimed the rocket at Angel with a smirk that quickly turned to panic as the weapon responded with a click.

“What the—“

Athena hurled the shield, all charged with the force of the blast. It curved away from Vallory and struck the executive in the neck with a sickening snap and gush of blood, then slammed into the blond man’s gut. He fell with a strangled cry just as the shield swept the launcher out of Vallory’s hands. Vallory was a deer in the headlights for a moment before she left the rocket launcher and began hauling the groaning blond man out of the room. Athena roared and decapitated a bandit in a single swipe. Any part of her outfit that wasn’t red before was red now. 

“This isn’t over!” Vallory yelled in retreat.

As soon as they were no longer in immediate danger, Athena stumbled and once again leaned on her sword.

“You’re right,” Athena called back. “Once I’m done with this job, you’re next on my list.”

Vallory and her bandits were out of sight, and Athena sat down on the ground, breathing heavily and cradling her shield arm. 

“Aren’t you going to go after them?” Sasha said.

“I’m tapped out for today,” Athena muttered. “Last time I took a hit like that was on Elpis.” She ruefully rubbed her wrist. “My ability to tolerate injury is declining.”

“You two are handy to have around,” Rhys complimented nervously, having finally emerged from wherever he was hiding.

“We totally could have taken them,” Fiona said confidently.

“Oh, yeah,” Vaughn laughed.

“I wasn’t talking about you. I meant me and Sasha.”

“Hey!” Vaughn protested. “I’m useful! I hit that one dude in the face with a rock!”

“He’s right,” Sasha sighed, pointing to a man who was lying unresponsive with a broken nose. “Right in the kisser. Did you do snicket or something?”

“I used to play squash,” Rhys input.

“No one fuckin’ cares,” Fiona informed him. 

“Can we examine what we came here for?” Athena said curtly. 

Sasha frowned and rotated the ball in her hands. She placed the ball on the floor, and soon everyone was huddled around it looking for an on button.

“We shouldn’t activate it,” Angel suggested. “We need to have a talk about—"  
“Here we go!” Fiona whooped. 

Angel groaned and buried her head in her hands. She should have taken her chances destroying it when they first found it. Even Athena’s curiosity was piqued now. 

She reluctantly peered over Fiona’s shoulder to watch Gortys activate. She actually didn’t quite know what form this key would take.

Time to see what all the fuss was about.


End file.
